How to promote digital textbooks

The government has solidified its initiative for the standardized implementation of digital textbooks. I have been interviewed much more frequently because of this. I had an interview with a magazine the other day.

Q. How is the current spread of digital textbooks in the classroom?

A. In elementary schools, there is one device available per six students in Japan. We are still far from the ideal of having one device per student. In this respect, Japan is an underdeveloped country. Digital textbooks are not yet standardized, and legal reform is necessary to fix this.

Q. What are the merits of a digital education?

A. Creation, sharing, efficiency. The aspects of fun, connectivity, and convenience. The ability to fully utilize the functions of AV equipment, the internet, and calculators.

Q. What results will we see from its implementation?

A. A digital education is currently recognized to have an effect on three aspects: the motivation to learn, comprehension, and expressiveness.

Q. Why do we need this right now?

A. There is a current decline in academic ability (lower OECD PISA ranks), and Japanese children have a lower motivation to learn than children in other countries. There is a global necessity for acquiring new problem solving and communication skills.

Q. Why do we need to implement it into schools?

A. Smartphones and digital devices have become essential parts of our daily life and jobs. Children also play with these devices, yet they are barred from them at school. A major problem is that the current education system only allows for paper textbooks, and I believe that solving this problem is our top priority.

Q. What is an ideal digital education?

A. It does not exist yet. Analog education is still under constant reform, and is far from its ideal. Digital education will continue to see reform even 100 years from today. The most important thing right now is to get the ball rolling.

Q. What are some specific examples of digital education?

A. Students can teach and play with each other in the classroom, and more and more students continue to communicate with each other outside of school hours. In many cases, we see a natural combination of digital + analog, and virtual + reality.

Q. What if the teachers are unable to use these digital devices?

A. I think that they might take offense to the question, considering that even 2-year olds can manage to use them. There are even some reports stating that veteran teachers give the best digital lessons.

Q. Why has Japan fallen behind?

A. The Japanese have many doubts about digital education, such as whether or not it will improve academic ability, whether or not the students and teachers will be able to use it, and whether or not it will have a negative effect on posture. However, the biggest bottleneck is that analog education has seen success in Japan in the past. People have an undefined fear about switching systems.

Q. How do you explain the disparity seen in the spread of digital education?

A. The willingness of the leader of each municipality. Municipality admeasures acting as a roadblock despite the funds for the digitization of education being available. The degree of priority for the digitization of education versus other administration.

Q. What is your reaction to MEXT’s report?

A. They concluded to begin digitalizing pre-existing paper textbooks and give those official certification, which I believe to be a realistic solution. On the other hand, forcing the costs of digital textbooks onto families is a problem. Digital textbooks should be distributed for free, with the money for them coming out of the government’s budget as it does for paper textbooks.

Q. What problems need to be solved for the success of digital education?

A. 1) The National Diet: Legal reform for the standardization of digital textbooks.

2) Municipalities: Implementing digital equipment in schools.

(One PC per six elementary students. This amount is considered the bare minimum for principal countries. Municipalities are allocated taxes by the government for this very purpose, so it is their responsibility to put together a proper budget for it.)

3) Municipalities: Implementing the internet.

(Even if education hardware and software are prepared for the students, the availability of the internet at schools can act as a bottleneck. We must proceed with the implementation of the internet at schools while solving the problems of net security and privacy protection along the way.)

4) Private sector: Low-cost distribution of devices and teaching materials.

(The private sector is tasked with formation of systems such as a distribution system for used devices, and an agency for the copyright processing of teaching materials.)

Q. Will this be expensive?

A. The Japanese government’s spending on education is too low. As a society, these are prices that we simply must pay.

Q. How will the private sector get involved?

A. There are many tasks for them, such as the formation of a distribution system for used devices, a system for distributing teaching material, or an agency for the copyright processing of teaching materials. We should consider education as an industry and expand our efforts.

Q. Some people are against the industrialization of education. How do you respond to them?

A. A large percentage of the 20 trillion-JPY cost of education relies on the digital market. If Japan does not turn education into its own industry, then we will just use foreign hardware and teaching materials instead. Through industrialization, we will be able to promote investment and overseas development, resulting in a quality teaching environment.

Read More

The White Paper on Information and Communications is a warning to business managers

This year’s White Paper on Information and Communications has been released. Once again, I was part of its Editorial Committee.

The growth of ICT is expected to push up the real GDP to 33.1 trillion JPY by 2020.
The White Paper focused on IoT, big data, and AI this year. The outline can be read here. There are a number of points that I would like to bring up from it.

One of this year’s challenges was analyzing ICT consumer surplus.
MIT Sloan’s McAfee and Brynjolfsson’s “The Second Machine Age” points out that one of the limitations of GDP is that production and industrial value cannot be used to measure the value of ICT, bringing us to the question of how to measure the consumer surplus created by products and services.

This is a problem that I have been aware of  for some time, and I have yet to see anyone succeed at creating an index for it. There was a firm resolve to tackle the issue in this year’s White Paper.

The outline states, “ICT brings about values to the company side and the consumer side. While the values brought to the company side can be ultimately identified as GDP growth, a part of the values brought to the consumer side cannot be identified through existing statistics,” and analyzes (i) consumer surplus, (ii) time saving, and (iii) information assets (user reviews, etc.)

For (i) consumer surplus (the difference between the price a consumer is willing to pay and the price he/she actually pays), the example of music/video distributions was taken, showing that users gained a monthly surplus of about 150 – 200 JPY. This adds up to an annual surplus of 109.7 billion JPY.

For (ii) time saving, the example of internet shopping was taken, showing that users saved about 40 minutes to 1 hour per set of purchases.

For (iii) information assets (user reviews), the example of internet shopping was taken, showing that more than 80% of users had the experience of deciding on which product to purchase by reading user reviews.

While I cannot help but feel that the actual consumer surplus is larger than what was reported, I would like to give credit to the White Paper for facing the issue. A deeper, more accurate analysis will serve as a great contribution to the world.

Meanwhile, the White Paper has a critical attitude towards the company side’s response.

The ICT investments made by Japanese companies are revealed to be “defensive ICT investments,” made for the purpose of increasing operational efficiency and cost reduction.

Analysts state that by making “offensive ICT investments” to “improve products and services with ICT,” and “reform business models through the practical use of ICT,” American companies have taken the lead with ICT products and services.

Not only is the ICT investment/GDP of Japanese companies low compared to that of American and British companies, it decreases even further during recessions, while studies show that the figure increases for American and British companies in the same situation. It believe that one of the reasons why the competitive power of Japanese companies has failed to increase in the past 10 years is because business managers undermine ICT.

There is also an analysis on the use of IoT.

In Japan, the IoT progress index, which comprehensibly represents the status of operational efficiency improvement, etc. by using IoT, is low. While the figures the Japan that achieved for its communications infrastructure are higher than ever, its IoT progress index remains lower than that of the US, China, Germany, and the UK. This means that the problem lies on the use side, not the supply side. This too is a problem caused by business management.

Japan’s IoT-driven market expansion is also predicted to be relatively low compared to other countries. While the overall IoT rate of adoption for other countries is expected to double or triple between 2015 and 2020, Japan’s IoT rate of adoption is low, and the gap between it and other countries may increase in the future.

There is also an analysis on AI.

In regards to the future penetration of AI, many Japan workplaces responded to a survey by saying, “I will not make any particular response of preparations.” Meanwhile, many US respondents answered that they will respond/prepare by continuing their current work with the position of using AI through actions such as learning knowledge and skills of AI.

However, this can be interpreted in an alternate way.
Compared to the US, Japanese workers show less resistance to both introducing AI into the workplace and working alongside AI. This may indicate that the spread of AI into Japanese workplaces may happen smoother than in other countries.

Read More